Thursday, August 10, 2017

Jessica Lange

Jessica Lange played Joan Crawford earlier this year in FEUD and she's nominated for an Emmy for her performance.  DEADLINE speaks with her:

“I became obsessed with her childhood,” says Lange. Lucille LeSueur was sexually abused by her stepfather at 11, then thrown into a boarding school where she was forced to earn her keep by cooking and cleaning for her classmates. Hollywood was LeSueur’s ticket out, and she seized it with a grip she wouldn’t release for 50 years. “If you look at her early films, [Our] Dancing Daughters and the early footage of her, there’s an abandon, almost a kind of vulgarity to her,” says Lange. “I don’t think it was a mistake that [F. Scott] Fitzgerald referred to her as one of the original Jazz Babies. I would have loved to ask her about the extreme of going from that girl who danced to ‘Black Bottom’ or the Charleston to ‘Joan Crawford,’” says Lange, pronouncing LeSueur’s new name like stiff velvet.

As Lange’s Crawford sighs in the season finale, “I felt like I always had to be on, that if someone caught a glimpse of the girl beneath the movie star then—poof!—I’d go back to that sad little wretch I’d been.” Back then, the average civilian couldn’t comprehend the pressure of creating, and maintaining, a public image. Today, thanks to Instagram, we do. And while there’s no single journalist as powerful as Hedda Hopper, a woman who took pride in creating, and wrecking, careers, Lange notes that, “the internet, as a kind of anonymous entity, is successful at that from time to time.
“When you think about being under contract to MGM or Warner Bros., and what you had to do to hold on to that position, it’s hard for people to even understand what was at stake with that stardom,” says Lange. No wonder Crawford was armored—literally. On that infamous 1963 evening when Crawford sabotaged Davis’s Oscar win and stole the spotlight by accepting Anne Bancroft’s award, she steeled herself in a silver beaded dress that weighed over 40 pounds. Murphy recreated the entire backstage of the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium and sent Lange stalking through it in a tricky single shot where she passes through green rooms and kitchens, nods at wannabes, and even pats a man on the back while he’s at the urinal, before pausing to crush a cigarette right before she goes onstage to officially win Hollywood’s Cattiest Queen. “Between takes, we’d have to slip the dress off because it was just making my back and shoulders and everything ache,” says Lange. But Crawford forced herself to carry its weight all night.



She's in a very tough category this year.  Her competition includes Nicole Kidman, Susan Sarandon and Reese Witherspoon.

I am personally rooting for Nicole.

But if Susan, Jessica or Reese won, I'd still be fine with it.

They all gave great performances.

Carrie Coon and Felicity Huffman are also nominated in this category.

I don't think they have a chance.


Going out with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

 
*movie preview voice* from the producers of Iraq War comes a new blood-soaked debacle, this time with *record scratch* real nuclear weapons






Eli Lake: "Leaving aside means and only looking at outcome, regime change for North Korea would be a great outcome from a humanitarian perspective."

It's as though the last fourteen years never happened or happened without Eli Lake.

Iraq had regime change.

There's been no benefit -- that's across the board but certainly when it comes to "a humanitarian perspective."

Iraq still lacks a stable government -- forget one that governs fairly.

It remains one of the most corrupt nations in the world.

Population wise, it's a young country now with a median age of 19.9 years.

It's a country of orphans in many respects due to the never-ending violence.

A country of widows and orphans.



Without an income + often with children to support, Mosul’s war widows are among most vulnerable displaced in :







Areas of Iraq will produce birth defects for decades due to the weapons used there.  (Used there by foreign forces -- the US-led coalition.)

Humanitarian includes medical and the US has bombed hospitals throughout the war as has the Iraqi government.  In addition, doctors have been repeatedly targeted and threatened leading to many of them fleeing the country.


The education system is as frayed as everything else from the war.  In the next 20 years, Iraq needs to build at least 20,000 schools as a result of many things including (a) the destruction of schools from bombings and (b) 'aid' that resulted in faulty construction.

I'm failing to see any benefits "from a humanitarian perspective."

And the Iraq War was supposed to be 'quick.'

Instead, it's 14 years later and still going.


: attacks army positions in the area of Diyuub in northern , kills several soldiers & burs 4 bulldozers.





In pictures: sharpshooters sneak up on Iraqi Army checkpoints near Tal Afar






This is Iraq right now:


US-backed Iraqi troops and militias assaulting and executing starved civilians found under the rubble in Old






Confused as to how this qualifies as a 'success' "from a humanitarian perspective."




Overturned Blackwater conviction evokes darkest days of Iraq War: | looks back to that day.





Darkest days?

What a load of nonsense.

THE WASHINGTON POST can call it the "darkest days" because it's a contractor and further removed from the US military.

Falluja in April or November of 2004.

The gang-rape and murder of Abeer by US soldiers.

The use of illegal weapons by the US-led coalition.

But Blackwater is the "darkest days"?

Far be it from THE WASHINGTON POST to ever call out the US government.

And speaking of which, shame on any US journalist writing about Blackwater today and still not telling reporters who was being protected.

Remember that?

Supposedly, a US official was being escorted by Blackwater that day.

All these years later, we can't even be told (a) if that was true and (b) if true, who it was?



The following community sites updated:













  • iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq Iraq




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